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The Wording Out
open mics
at Northrop
are always
a fun experience,
with the ill-timed
comedians,
the dead
mother’s missed
eulogies,
the fancied
subjective
assumed
thoughts of
same same same
injustices
coming
over that
easily acted
Loft literary
formula (EASY!),
maybe ifSome (U) Slam was
more inclusive,
maybe if
certain groups
didn’t exclude,
they would
find others
in their
audience
also wishing
for something
objective,
real, novel,
also wishing
for something
(anything!)
that perhaps
sounds new.

I don’t know though…

***

Stop assuming what people around you think,
write about what you see, your experience.

Sure, they tell you to
join their literary groups
in order to get your words read,
in order to get your art noticed,
in order to make an impression on
the blossoming local scene.

Well, it’s just that: local,
and it still is, that’s it.

And a person can become
an organization alone.

Few think about a broad world
where 9 billion people might enjoy
everything or nothing that the creative
text you wrote has to offer…

Yeah, I think, gatherings are good for some—
those who need crutches for strong legs,
or those who need stitches for band aids.

Those who need editors
to change their ideas
so they will sell
and morph into comfortable writers.

I need approval
from institutions to feel good
about myself,
imagine that.

That would have to be
my anti-motto, something I truly avoid.

Ha! Such jokes…

Years back no one would read
new cognitive prose,
my free work, no one would talk
about it,
zero recognition—I certainly wasn’t overseas then,
and I still am as called before
a “failed writer”.

Everyone was doing their own thing;
others were not as important,
it was about self—well, selfishness,
but on the side there was
a feigned pack mentality.

The only change they wanted
was the change they made.

Now poets go around
and pretend as though
everyone in the Cities
should get involved,
because what they were doing
back then, individually didn’t work,
so lets band together.

It didn’t pan out for them.
Their dreams came only at REM.

So, now they organize cliques,
they establish large groups into
bad plays on high society hierarchy,
the kind of thing that real
artists have vehemently loathed.

They set their own rules, now,
and their own guidelines—
if you can’t beat them join them—
yeah, good idea.

What a theory,
such lack of heart.

I think in this case
to become a part of it,
to get to the epicenter,
to get to the whole,
to be welcomed into this special circle,
the imaginary self-actualized poet,
non-starving artist,
famous, you-know-me sort of thing,

you would have to admit defeat,
you would have to admit you lost,
and that your initial passions
were complete shit.

You would probably have to change your ways,
attempt to be more like them—
assimilate, like the rest,
figure hip dress, obscure verse,
employ ten-dollar words,
cloned topics—of course gendered,
racial, anthropological, progressive,
and leftist political,
try for universal acceptance, right here.

***

Yawn, I say,
describe a situation,
an actual event:

CC was on 4th street SE at the bus stop,
she had forgotten my name,
her lips were red,
she said she had a new job.

I rode away on a bike
while passing out flyers.

***

I mean, you might as well kill progress,
just so your road is less rocky.
Leave change by the wayside,
never go against the grain.

A conformist mentality
will help you fit in better,
don’t ya know?

Your personality, your ideology discussed
only in past-tense phraseology and terms,
it all must go.

More of the same than Minnesota lakes.

But then you think about
how you were once a unique person,
an artist, that no one read,
no one cared about,
and how it was fun doing what you loved.

People read, they were baffled, confused,
or were turned off—or became aroused.

Now you do it to please others,
while not pleasing yourself,
while pandering to their ways.

They stare, they clap, they record,
they namedrop, to charm the masses, for a club,
to be accepted, to be loved for being
something that they are entirely not.

No way.

See, I imagine that.
I fancy fickle easy artists,
they travel in bands
with big words and little action.

One would have to sell off
their creative soul
to even try to get involved.

Some transcendental thought
about my present situation:
O’ angst, O’ cigarettes, O’ beer,
O’ my identity, O’ job, O’ rent,
O’ apparent unique awareness
in a bubble, misconstrued,
and lain out before you, spread
and you judge ME, i the same.
How sad. I am a poet, I tell the world,
though I never write. Listen! I am a painter,
though I never paint a picture, how sad. See!
Everyone is the same in this tiny city,
where is little progress? Where is change?
Who cares? Who doesn’t make hip-hop,
who isn’t in a band, who doesn’t make art,
who doesn’t have a bad or good day?
I’ll throw some big words (effect)
in the mix to make it more modern, more real,
here you go: lithe, sinewy, post-structuralism
puissant, Midwesterner, Mississippi,
oh, i am sorry, that ending was pat.
here are some interesting and semi-ironic ideas,
and everyone talks about it.
they were never heard before, but they were!
My best friends are editors and I am a solicited writer.
I have paid the price, which is time and titles.
My contemporaries all think I am the best,
we are very close to one another,
they name drop me because I am a genius.
Come to my seminar, my summit!
Let me read for you, to you…
So. Fucking. Slow. I am god. My thick frames
and tweed jacket match my skinny jeans
and my leather shoes. Now, I have
one question: Who the fuck are you?

Truths for lies:
This is safe,
This is fact,
This in fact is safe,
We care about you.

It is snug-up, or snug-down, or
just snug enough, or caught in between comfortable,
and I can’t go outside,
I have to decide.

Then it is: A pub visit, a flipped
switch, a lit door in the distance—these
palm trees have become foreigners
in desert sands which have turned to mud
by native rain power in your very living room
by way of: your very hand;

the vessel you hold,
repurposed from some ornate
decoration, from some ornate
description, from so-and-so’s ornate party,
or from some ornate magazine—ornate parts
of these

-Cult clubs.

And that is life:
black as night as petro ships by, as exhaust fumes fly,
as exhausted you sleeps, you snore, you don’t think;
as an “elected” official’s bank account goes cha-ching,
as a CEO draws outside of the lines, and talks energy.

(of course we need)

as the air goes in and out
of his mouth,
and in and out,
and in and out—

Like fucking, really.
Hey, you thought it. 🙂

Humans without a care,
they are there happily unawares.

With smiles on their dreaming faces,
as that napalm tube rolls on steel wheels in their backyards.